DOUANKARA, Mauritania (AP) — A new Russian military unit that replaced the Wagner mercenary group is committing abuses including rape and beheading as it joins Mali’s military to hunt down extremists, dozens of civilians who fled the fighting told The Associated Press.
The Africa Corps is using the same tactics as Wagner, the refugees said, in accounts not yet reported by the international media. Two refugees showed videos of villages burned by the “white men.” Two others said they found the bodies of their loved ones with their livers and kidneys missing, an abuse the AP previously reported around Wagner.
“It is a policy of trained soil,” said the head of the Mali village who escaped. “The soldiers don’t talk to anyone. Everyone they see, they shoot. No questions, no warning. People don’t even know why they are being killed.”
The vast Sahel region of West Africa has become the deadliest place in the world for extremism, with thousands of people killed. The military governments of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger have turned from Western allies to Russia for help in the fight against fighters affiliated with al-Qaida or the Islamic State group.
When the Africa Corps replaced Wagner six months ago, weary civilians hoped for less brutality. The United Nations says they have been abused by all sides in the conflict.
But refugees have described a new reign of terror by the Afrika Corps in the vast and largely lawless territory, and legal analysts say Moscow is directly responsible.
The PA has gained rare access to the Mauritanian border, where thousands of Malians have fled in recent months as fighting has intensified. He spoke to 34 refugees who described murder, kidnapping and indiscriminate sexual abuse. Many spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.
“They are the same men, paid by the government, and they continue the massacres. There is no difference between Wagner and Africa Corps,” said the head of the village.
The Malian authorities have never publicly acknowledged the presence of Wagner or the Africa Corps. But the Russian state media in recent weeks published reports from Mali, praising the African Corps for defending the country from “terrorists,” and the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed that the unit is active “at the request of the Malian authorities,” providing escorts on the ground, search and rescue operations and other work.
Russia’s Defense Ministry did not respond to AP questions.
We call the locals ‘dogs’ in Russian
It was early morning and Mougaloa was preparing sweet black tea when she heard gunshots. Seconds later, two cars pulled up in front of her tent, filled with masked white men shouting in a foreign language.
A shepherd from northern Mali, she has seen her share of horrors during the last decade of violence – but she said none were as ferocious as these men.
Armed men had come earlier, Mougaloa said. Usually the family would run away when they heard them coming. But three months ago, they were caught.
She said that the men arrived with Malian soldiers and captured her 20-year-old son, Koubadi. The Maljani asked him if he had seen militants. When he said no, they beat him until he passed out.
Then the men cut his throat as Mougaloa watched, helpless.
She said that the family fled but the armed men found them again towards the end of October.
This time, they didn’t ask questions. They wore masks and military uniforms. They took everything the family owned, from animals to jewelry.
And they kept repeating one word, “pes” – a derogatory term for dog in Russian.
They dragged Mougaloa’s 16-year-old daughter, Akhadya, as she tried to resist. Then they spotted Mougaloa’s older daughter, Fatma, and lost interest in Akhadya.
They took Fatma to her tent. Without thinking, Mougaloa took Akhadya’s hand and started running, leaving Fatma behind. They haven’t heard from her since.
“We were so afraid,” said Mougaloa, trembling. “We’re hoping you’ll get here at some point.”
Experts say it is impossible to know how many people are being killed and attacked in Mali, especially in remote areas, while journalists and aid workers have increasingly limited access to the country.
“There are many people raped, attacked, killed. Families are separated, there is no doubt about that,” said Sukru Cansizoglu, the representative in Mauritania for the UN refugee agency. But “sometimes it’s hard to really pinpoint who the perpetrators are.”
Civilians, under pressure from both the militants and the Africa Corps and Malian fighters, are “between a rock and a hard place,” said Heni Nsaibia of the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, or ACLED.
If people do not follow JNIM’s evacuation orders, they will face retribution, Nsaibia said. But if they escape, the Malian army and the African Corps consider them accomplices of JNIM.
Mougaloa’s family experienced it firsthand.
“If you don’t tell the army that you saw a jihadist, the army will kill you,” she said. “But if you tell them, the jihadists will find you and kill you.”
Questions about the Africa Corps
Reported abuses against civilians intensified when Wagner joined the underfunded Malian army in 2021. According to private security analysts, Mali paid Russia about $10 million a month for Wagner’s assistance. While the group was never officially under the command of the Kremlin, it had close ties to Russia’s intelligence and military.
Moscow began developing the Africa Corps as a rival to Wagner after its leader Yevgeny Prigozhin was killed in a plane crash in 2023 following his brief armed rebellion in Russia that challenged President Vladimir Putin’s rule.
It is not clear whether the terms of the Mali agreement will remain the same for Africa Corps. Not much is known about its operations, including the number of fighters, which analysts estimate at around 2,000.
Not all Africa Corps fighters are Russian. Several refugees told the AP that they saw Black men speaking foreign languages. The European Council for Foreign Relations in a recent report said that the unit recruits from Russia, Belarus and African states.
The African Corps and Malian forces have stepped up their joint offensives in northern Mali, where there are substantial gold reserves, according to the Critical Threats project by the American Enterprise Institute.
While civilian deaths blamed on the Russians are down this year – 447 so far compared to 911 last year – the numbers may not reflect the full scale, Nsaibia said: “People are more afraid to report, to avoid putting their own safety on the line.”
Fewer foreigners are watching. A UN peacekeeping mission withdrew from Mali in 2023 under government pressure. The withdrawal of Mali this year from the International Criminal Court further complicated the efforts to trace the abuses. The ICC has been investigating serious crimes committed in Mali since 2012, when fighting with armed groups began.
Eduardo Gonzalez Cueva, an independent UN expert on human rights in Mali, told the AP that he asked the country’s military authorities twice this year for permission to visit, and sent them a questionnaire. They did not answer.
The Malian government considers investigations into alleged abuses to be “inconvenient and harmful to the morale of the troops,” Cueva said in his latest report to the UN Human Rights Council in March, noting that “the escalation of serious human rights violations and abuses by all actors is accelerating due to impunity.”
‘Only the name has changed’
When Wagner announced his departure from Mali, some refugees decided to return home. Many found that nothing had changed.
“It was the same thing,” said one, Bocar, who spoke with resignation while cradling his younger son. He said he had seen bodies with missing organs.
He said he had counted all the men killed or kidnapped by Wagner and the Malian army in his hometown of Lere before he fled for the first time in 2023. He said that the list reached 214 people.
“Only the name has changed,” he said of the Africa Corps. “The clothes, the vehicles, the people remained the same. The methods remained the same, and they even got worse. So we left home again.”
Other refugees described that they were so scared of the Russians that at every engine-like noise, they would run or climb the nearest tree.
One woman said that she was so desperate to escape from the Wagner fighters that she once left her 3-month-old baby at home. When she returned hours later, her daughter was lying in front of the house, her little hands clenched into fists.
“I was so scared, I forgot I had a baby,” said the woman as she picked up her daughter.
Legal experts said the switch from Wagner to Africa Corps would make the Russian government directly responsible for the fighters’ actions.
“Despite the rebranding, there is a striking continuity in personnel, commanders, tactics and even insignia between Wagner and Africa Corps,” said Lindsay Freeman, senior director of international accountability at the UC Berkeley School of Law’s Human Rights Center, which has monitored the conflict in Mali.
Because the Africa Corps is directly incorporated into Russia’s Ministry of Defense, it can be treated as an organ of the Russian state under international law, Freeman said. “This means that any war crimes committed by Afrika Corps in Mali are, in principle, attributable to the Russian government under the rules on state responsibility.”
‘Life has lost its meaning’
When white men came to the village of Kurmare less than a month ago, Fatma said that everyone ran away except her.
At the sound of gunshots, her 18-year-old daughter had a seizure and fell unconscious. Fatma stayed with her as the men drove into the village and shot at the fleeing people.
The men went from house to house, taking the women’s jewelry and killing the men. When they entered Fatma’s house they thought her daughter was dead and left her alone.
Fatma did not want to talk about what the white men did to her.
She “stays between God and me,” she agreed, trembling.
When they left her village hours later, she found the body of her son, who was killed in his shop. Then she found her wounded brother. As soon as she went to Mauritania, her daughter also died, who continued to have attacks.
“Before the conflict broke out, I had strength, I had courage,” Fatma said weakly. Now, “life has lost its meaning.”
Her family is with the Fulani ethnic group, which Mali’s government accuses of being affiliated with the militants. Some Fulani, who have long been neglected by the central government, have joined the fighters. Civilians are often targeted by both sides.
But Fatma said that no one was killed or injured in her village and did not belong to any armed group. “I don’t know what we did to deserve it,” she said.
Now, in Mauritania, the memories haunt her. She has trouble sleeping and breathing, and has repeatedly clutched her chest. She spends her time looking at the only photo she has of her daughter.
“I’m just someone who’s alive and I look like a person I was – but I’m not actually living,” she said.